From the 1600s through the 19th hundred , West Africa was home to a succession of sophisticated andpowerful kingdoms . As in Europe , Asia and the Americas during this clip , rival powers in West Africa waged bloody wars for economical , political and cultural dominance .
For centuries , theKingdom of Dahomeywas the wealthiest and most feared of these West African power , and Dahomey became famous for its elite army of women warriors called theAgojie , whom all-inclusive - eyed European observer dub the " Dahomey Amazons " after their fictional counterparts in Grecian myth .
The hit 2022 celluloid " The Woman King " star Oscar - winner Viola Davis as Nanisca , anAgojiegeneral bravely defending her kingdom , led by King Ghezo , against an unholy confederation between Dahomey ’s archrival , the Oyo Kingdom and European slave traders .
But while the real - lifeAgojie , the cosmos ’s only all - female army , were vastly hardy and skilled warrior , the filmhas been criticizedfor fake Dahomey and King Ghezo ’s truthful office in the Atlantic slave trade . The truth is that from1640 to 1860 , much of Dahomey ’s wealth came from raiding rival kingdoms and betray millions of captives to Lusitanian hard worker bargainer . And as Dahomey ’s fine and fiercest warriors , theAgojiewere critical to the achiever of those slave - captivate raid .
After the slave trade ended in the mid-19th one C , Dahomey ’s storyline changed and theAgojiewere indeed able-bodied play the part of exemption scrapper , as the film producer would wish us to see them . The enemy at that meter wereFrench colonizerswho wanted to seize control of West Africa . As always , theAgojiefought valorously for their king , but their floor did n’t have a felicitous ending .
The Origins of Dahomey’s Female Warriors
harmonise to unwritten account passed down through the centuries , the first Dahomean kings settled in modern - mean solar day Benin in the early 1600s . King Huegbadja built the Dahomean upper-case letter inAbomey , about 80 Swedish mile ( 128 kilometre ) inland from the Atlantic slide . The story goes that he take form a extra dance band of distaff elephant hunters , maybe the early predecessors of theAgojie .
Next come Huegbadja ’s boy King Akaba , who placed chiliad of uniformed female scrapper at the ass of his army as it marched into conflict . The woman were n’t intend to fight — not at first , at least — but the sight of such a large and organised army restrain Dahomey ’s weaker rival .
When Akaba died circumstantially , his twin sis Tassi Hangbe was quiet installed as " regent " or queen , explains Lynne Ellsworth Larsen , an nontextual matter chronicle prof at the University of Arkansas Little Rock who conducted research in Benin on theroyal adult female of Dahomey .
" You have a woman prevail the kingdom , " suppose Larsen , " and Queen Hangbe would have demand a female guard to keep the palace in ordination . "
After Queen Hangbe ’s brief sovereignty , a King Ajaba add up to top executive and significantly expand the Dahomey ’s routes in the Atlantic striver swap . King Ajaba was accompany by his son , King Tegbesu , who reorganize the purple court to reach a form of gender balance that was centuries forrader of its time . He implemented thekpojito , which was a female reign - mate of the top executive . Kpojito Hwanjile and King Tegbesu ruled together , balancing the power between manly and female person . This ideology endured until the oddment of Dahomey land .
" You had a male lawcourt and a distaff court , and a distaff army to equilibrize out the virile regular army , " says Larsen . " The female soldiers also had privileges in the palace , where the male soldier did not . "
Dahomean Women Become the Fearless Agojie
But it was n’t until the nineteenth - 100 sovereignty of King Ghezo and his successor King Glele that Dahomey ’s female fighter formally became theAgojie , a standing USA of G of virtuous women warrior who lived in the castle and became infamous for their pitilessness in battle .
" neighbor fear theAgojie — they were highly skilled , " says Larsen , who maneuver to precolonial accounts of Europeans who were treated to military presentation in Dahomey .
In 1861 , a Lusitanian missionary watched thousands ofAgojiescale a wall of thorn - cover acacia branches and ignore their painful lesion as they executed a vicious mock attack on a settlement . And in 1889 , a French naval officer find a youngAgojierecruit ( reportedly Nanisca ) who was order to run a prisoner to prove her " insensitiveness " to killing .
" She walk jauntily up [ to the prisoner ] , swung her sword three times with both hands , then calmly turn out the last flesh that attached the drumhead to the trunk,“reportedthe officer . " She then squeezed the blood off her weapon and swallowed it . "
How Were the Dahomey Involved in the Atlantic Slave Trade?
The horrors of the Atlantic slave trade prey the Kingdom of Dahomey , but as soon as Dahomean king captured the coastal port of Ouidah in the early 1700s , they became actively involved in the lucrative industry of buying and selling human beings .
Ouidah was situated on a great Laurus nobilis known as the Bight of Benin , which was one of the most dynamic slave ports in West Africa . From 1640 to 1860 , close to 2 million hoi polloi were export from the Bight of Benin into slavery , equaling one - twenty percent of all enslave Africans who were transport off to plantations in Brazil , the Caribbean and North America , historianPatrick Manning wrotein his 2004 book " Slavery , Colonialism and Economic Growth in Dahomey , 1640 - 1960 . "
The Kingdom of Dahomey was responsible for capturing and selling most of those individuals into slavery at a rate of 7,000 to 15,000 each year . And by the reigns of King Ghezo and King Glele , when theAgojieconstituted a stand US Army of 6,000 distaff fighters , woman warriors were lead many of the fearsome foray that captured and kidnap countless enemies for sale into slavery .
In 1928 , African American author Zora Neale Hurston interviewed a formerly enslave Alabama man named Oluale Kossola , who had been get as a young boy in Benin in a dawn raid by theAgojie . When Kossola ’s baron refused to pay protection to Dahomey , he was behead , then theAgojieswept through the village , taking captives and even mutilate the wound , according to the New Yorker .
" No man kin be so strong lak de charwoman soldiers from de Dahomey , " KossolatoldHurston , before he was unable to extend the consultation . " Kossola was no longer on the porch with me , " Hurston wrote . " He was squat about that flaming in Dahomey . His face was twitching in abyssal pain . It was a horror mask . "
In return for captives , Manning says in his Christian Bible , Dahomean kings were make up in import goods like baccy and rum from Brazil and the Caribbean , fabric from India , cowrie from the Maldives and manufacture goodness from Europe .
Why Were the Agojie Cast as Savages?
In the nineteenth C , every European power require a spell ofAfrica ’s wealth , and in 1863 Gallic force occupied Porto - Novo , a interface city not far from Ouidah , and distinguish it a French associated state , which angered the Dahomeans . tension escalated until all - out war break away out in 1890 .
TheAgojie , armed with superannuated rifles and swords , fought with characteristic bravery against the French , but even the women ’s superior grooming and ferocity was no match for the Europeans ' heavy artillery and numbers .
" [ They ] cast out themselves on [ our ] bayonet with prodigious bravery,“reporteda soldier with the Gallic Foreign Legion . " [ N]either the cannons , nor the canister shot , nor the salvo blast stops them . … It is really unusual to see women so well led , so well disciplined . "
In the Second Franco - Dahomean War , fight back in 1892 , the results were even more skew-whiff . According to Smithsonian cartridge clip , between 2,000 and 4,000 Dahomean men and woman were wipe out during seven week of combat , compared to 52 Europeans and 33 Africans who fell on the French side . TheAgojiewere gutted , with only 50 or 60 female warriors leave alive from a regiment that started with 1,200 .
Throughout the Franco - Dahomean Wars , the French press portrayed the Dahomeans — and in particular theAgojie — as the lowest character of " savages . "
" Illustrated newspaper were a new matter and they published full - Thomas Nelson Page spreads of female warriors with a panga raised in one hired hand and bloody head in the other , " Larsen says . " It was a abuse of these women , who were their own citizenry and skilled in what they did . But for French colonial , it was a sign of the zodiac of their barbarity . According to French idea of gender character in the 19th century that was not fine . "
In that style , " The Woman King " showcases the bravery , loyalty and skill of theAgojie , and handle them with a thick respect that was denied them by the outside world . However , whether the film maker could have accomplished that while including a more nuanced and precise portrait of their involvement in the striver swop is another question .
